Coffee and crocs

The plantation we visited just one hour from Cairns in the town of Mareeba was the first to establish itself in Australia back in the early 70's.

The Jaques family learned their trade on the hillsides of Kilimanjaro. Interestingly coffee cant grow south of the tropic of Capricorn and the humidity and climate of Queensland make perfect conditions. We learned about the process from growing the coffee cherries for a period of 9 months then picking them from the trees. The various layers are peeled off and then different roasting times applied depending on what strength/flavor you want from the coffee. 

One of the Jaques brothers was the first to design and build the worlds first automated coffee picking machine. It goes along the rows, shakes the trees like a giant car wash then collects the cherries whilst also pruning the height of the trees as they pass out the back. With manual labor too expensive here in oz this was a critical step for the family to make the business economical.

They currently have 90 acres of coffee trees on a 300 acre farm and are experimenting with new bio fuel trees which sounded awesome. Their plantation has been destroyed twice in its short history, the first time by the global depression in the 80's, the second by the Australian government who wait for it - SPRAYED THE ENTIRE PLANTATION WITH CHEMICALS THAT KILLED ALL THE TREES IN FEAR OF A FRUIT FLY?!?! What an amazing cock up.

The coffee farmers sued the government and were able to start up again but it can take more than 5 years before a coffee tree can produce cherries to make coffee.

An awesome visit which Nay obviously loved, as coffee is way up on her "Can't live without list"...several places higher than me...

Then into the rainforest for a crocodile hunting tour with crocodile Dundee himself - a man named Lex who was as manly as a man gets. Lived in the rainforest all his life, catches more than 157 barramundi in a year and knows crocodiles better than his own species. 

He kept saying "fairdinkum", which must mean something. All the other words he said we couldn't really understand as he had one hell of an Ozzy accent. Its not an not an accent normally tricky to understand but when a guy lives in a rainforest for 65 years I guess it changes you voice?!

The tide was up in the river by more than 3 meters so unfortunately we didn't catch sight of any crocodiles as there wasn't a lot of surrounding banks for them to lie on. We were the only 2 on the boat, and meeting a man like Lex was fascinating enough!

All I kept thinking was how massively unpredictable wildlife is, and how long those blue planet nature filming blokes must have to hang around to get those awesome shots we see on tele!